Companies operating in today’s dynamic and the highly competitive digital world should ideally understand the digital body language of their users and create world-class experiences to optimize conversions. These conversions could be form submissions, newsletter subscriptions, content downloads, products/service purchases, etc. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a continuous method of improvement which can help convert passive website visitors into active users and accomplish your online business goals. Based on your website performance (gauged through quantitative data using analytics) and user feedback (qualitative data acquired from customer reviews, surveys, social sentiments, etc.), figuring out what your visitors are looking for when they come to any of your digital platforms (desktop site, mobile site or mobile apps) and create a frictionless experience, is the main objective of this initiative. In simple words, conversion rate optimization is finding WHY your visitors are not converting and fixing it for the optimum results.

Just like other enthusiastic marketers, you also wish to provide seamless usability and engagement to your visitors. Consequently, web and app properties are developed with an idea of what, according to the creators, is the best experience that can be designed. Once the navigation and conversion flows are all set, the properties are released to live audience. Then comes a reality check, when users behave significantly different from what you expected – dropping off during conversion flows, showing a lost behavior in the navigation – subsequently, resulting in low conversions. The most important KPI that internet companies worry about is the suboptimal conversion rate. Understanding what are the possible reasons that are causing the low conversions, breaking them into logical subparts, creating engaging user experiences, and testing them to identify the winning variation which will assist in improvising conversion rate, are the elements of the Testing and Optimization methodology.

Businesses often get trapped in their day-to-day operational activities and have absolutely no time to keep track of their website or app performance closely. If you don’t monitor and track your website/app routinely (I mean to say on a daily basis) you might miss out on a few signals which can eventually result in suboptimal conversion rate. We’ve identified the top 5 signs you need to watch out for and know when you are ready to embrace conversion rate optimization initiatives:

We’ve identified the top 5 signs you need to watch out for and know when you are ready to embrace conversion rate optimization initiatives:

#1: Extremely High Site-Wide Bounce Rate

You spend a lot of money directly or indirectly to bring traffic to your website. In some cases they are directly attributable, as paid search, display or any marketing campaign; but others, like SEO efforts, are often difficult to measure and given credit to because there is no direct impact. If you are spending a lot of marketing dollars bringing the audience to your website that is majorly bouncing off, then this could indicate an inability to translate the message of the campaign that the landing page has to convey. Similarly, if you have done lots of SEO on the page and you show high up on the Search Engine listings, but people do not find the right content and they bounce, then this can have a serious impact on your Organic listings and you will be pushed down. Identifying the reasons behind high bounce rate and aligning the content with the customer expectations fall under a specific branch of CRO and is known as Landing Page Optimization.

#2: High Form Fall-Outs

Visitors leaving the form page or not filling it completely are big challenges, especially for Lead Generation businesses. A lot of research and debates have gone behind understanding what should be the optimal number of form parameters. While for the business, more the information they can collect the better; for the user, it’s just the opposite. Thus, it is critical to achieve a point where the friction between the two is least. We have often noticed that even minor things, like the ordering of the fields, can make a significant impact whether a submission would happen or not; hence very careful planning is required for optimal form performances.

#3: High Cart Abandonment

This problem is the e-commerce version of Form Fall-Outs. Here, we want to understand why, at any point of time, a user abandons the cart. There could be multiple reasons like difficult navigations, lack of sufficient information on the checkout pages (like contents of the cart, discount information, coupon codes, shipping information, return policy, additional charges or taxes, or even security certificates). Any seemingly minor point can potentially result in cart abandonment and hence deep analysis and testing is required to ensure that does not happen.

#4: High Exit Rates

Every session must have an exit page, but it becomes painful when a majority of traffic leaves the site from unexpected critical pages that were supposed to engage the traffic and take the visitors forward to assist in conversions. A ton of reasons could lead to this like lack of information, obscure CTAs, too much of text, or even using stock images that depict a lack of investment towards originality.

#5: Suboptimal Engagement Rates

To get someone to convert, you need to engage; there is no other option. But what is the definition of ‘good’ engagement? Is high engagement always good? Or, is low engagement always bad? We strongly believe in segmentation. By creating segments like landing pages, persuasive pages, and conversion pages, and then looking at the distribution of engagement, we can throw light on new insights. For instance, on some pages, high engagement could mean a struggle to find the right information, while on some pages low engagement may mean lack of complete information/CTAs or usability factors.

Nabler is an end-to-end experience optimization agency that collaborates with its clients as a trusted partner in their optimization and personalization programs.